History The Arch In A Classical School
A Journey Through History's Great Ideas
The Ethos Logos system uses history as the foundation of our entire grade/year of instruction. We break history into four parts:
Ancient History
(Mesopotamia to the Fall of Rome – 10,000 BC to 432 AD)
Medieval Times
(The Fall of Rome to The Enlightenment – 432 AD to 1700)
Americas Founding
(Pre-Columbian America to Pre-Civil War – 1500 to 1850)
Modern History
(The Civil War to 9/11 – 1865-2001)
These four periods repeat such that a scholar in our system will see a particular time period three times in their 1st to 12th-grade schooling experience. Within each time period, we break down the school year into 10 units. Each unit is designed to be covered in one month.
Within each unit, there are countless ways in which you can tailor a lesson for your scholar. The lesson cards include bullet points, general categories, and question prompts which you can explore and have fun with.
Each lesson card features one or more of the Ethos Logos 100. We specifically call these 100 events/people or things out so that you will make sure that these items are explored deeply at each grade level. The rest of the content is your choice based on your scholar's interests or your family's decisions.
Classical Education is about making deep connections and exploring the great works of science, literature, poetry, artists, musicians, religions, and people from history. We paired suggested lesson cards in these and other categories to the particular history card so that you can continue to move deeper and deeper into a time period. Gather the cards for the month across various curriculum content areas and use these lesson cards as the foundation of your teaching and learning.
Remember, as your scholar is learning a particular unit and time period in history, they are also learning in different subjects such as English; expanded vocabulary, refined writing, oral presentation skills, and values and virtues. This thematic approach helps a scholar better understand and synthesize each unit at a deeper and deeper level.
The Card Deck Curriculum
Because history is the arc with which we build all our curriculum around, the history card is your families monthly starting point. From the history card, you'll be able to graphically see the areas you can cover (if you wish).
We pair these history cards with more unit (monthly) cards including:
Great Men and Women From History
Science/Inventions
Literature (Historic novels by grade, poetry, read alouds)
Values and Virtues of the Month (2 per month for a total of 20)
Artists - Both visual and music
Along with the cards comes a workbook that is full of questions....no answers....just questions. We believe the fun and excitement of a Classical education is the discovery of new ideas. With easy access to the internet, this generation will forever have answers, the trick to pose the powerful questions.
To complement our lesson card we offer a workbook full of questions. These questions are grade leveled and aligned to each month-long history unit. The power of the right question is the essence of learning. These question banks help you to further plan and deliver interesting lessons on the topics you decide to explore.
We also offer a digital platform that again, lines up to the lesson cards and walks your scholar through a day-by-day, week-by-week, pre-programmed lesson sequence from model lessons built by our classroom teachers. These pre-built lessons can be customized using our large selection of lesson resources should you wish to further build upon our platform.
Do You Know The Top 100 Events In History?
After identifying the major historical occurrences, we organized, ranked, and debated each event's impact on the world. These top 100 events are included in each unit of our curriculum and are numbered on the actual time period that the event occurs.
We suggest that as you are covering a particular unit (month) of history, you focus on these top events to anchor the most important moments in the history of the west and east. The human odyssey is a fantastic adventure of good and bad, ups and downs.
These Top 100 Events were compiled and debated among history professors, K12 history teachers, history buffs, and after combing through dozens and dozens of old and new textbooks, source documents, and novels. By no means are these the only events of impact to human history and you and your family can debate for hours which events rank above others; we sure did! Once the events were outlined, organized, and then put into each monthly unit, you now have a platform to build projects, papers, and logical/rhetorical lessons.
By focusing on these big events, you can ensure that your student is exposed to the religions, people, events, and cultures from all human recorded history.
These Top 100 Events were compiled and debated among history professors, K12 history teachers, history buffs, and after combing through dozens and dozens of old and new textbooks, source documents, and novels. By no means are these the only events of impact to human history and you and your family can debate for hours which events rank above others; we sure did! Once the events were outlined, organized, and then put into each monthly unit, you now have a platform to build projects, papers, and logical/rhetorical lessons.
Great Men and Women of History
The idea behind the Great Men and Women of History add-on units is that the teacher can further customize their history units by featuring the lives of heroes and legends that appeared during the particular time frame in history.
These Great Men and Women can be tailored to meet the students' interests or to better culturally represent a historical figure that a student may identify. The goal is for teachers to weave these figures into their instructional lessons. We hope that students can see themselves in these Great Men and Women and one day goes on to change the world.
The front of the Great Men and Women unit cards have quotes or big questions to dig into on the character from history. The back has facts, dates, achievements, movies or books that may help to further explore the Great Men and Women of history.
The cards also include key Values and Virtues that made these people great. What an amazing way to make history come alive and set an example for your child of what greatness looks like.
The Deep Dive Into History
S.P.R.I.T.E. model of history and dissect the stories that accompany a time period.
The back of the history cards will include more specific events, people, inventions, ideas that all align with the S.P.R.I.T.E. model of history instruction. The S.P.R.I.T.E. model is one of many that teachers use to triangulate a particular time in history. The acronym stands for the major topics explored when teaching a particular time period in history. The acronym stands for:
Society • Family • Gender Relations • Social Classes • Inequalities • Lifestyles
Politics • Leaders, Elites • State Structure • War • Diplomacy, Treaties • Courts, Laws
Religion • Holy Books • Beliefs, Teachings • Conversion • Sin/Salvation • Deities
Intellectual • Art, Music • Writing, Literature • Philosophy • Math & Science • Education
Technology • New Inventions • New Tools, Weapons • Ways to Improve Life • Technical Solutions • Infrastructure
Economic • Type of System • Technology, Industry • Trade, Commerce • Capital/Money • Types of Businesses
Each unit has a series of suggested questions that will guide the teachers on grade-appropriate topics to deeper explore these subjects. You’ll notice that we are providing questions and not answers in our published workbooks. The power of a question is where all the magic in education resides. In our day and age of the internet, there are unlimited resources to find answers, but the well-crafted questions guide the discovery of a particular topic. We list out questions based on complexity that we think would fit a particular grade level. By no means do you have to stay within the suggested grade band. If your scholar is in 1st grade but can decipher a 5th-grade level question explore and research with them.
Values/Virtues Tie in
Character education is the development of knowledge, skills, and abilities that help scholars make informed and responsible choices. Character is derived from a Greek word that means “to mark," as on an engraving. Character education enables students to come face-to-face with the realities of life and have the skill sets to deal with what is presented. Schools see every type of positive and negative home experience walk through the doors and have a role in preparing scholars for the challenges and joys of their lives ahead. The role of schools in partnering and aligning with the families in their care is important not just for academic outcomes but for preparing students for life beyond school.
Pre-Built Day By Day Digital Units
We understand that taking the first step in teaching a history unit can be daunting.
• Where to start?
• With so much information on a particular unit, what’s the most important?
To alleviate some of our teacher's concerns, we’ve provided model lessons with day-by-day discovery and content sharing. These units have been built by our classroom teachers or experts at each particular grade level. The prebuilt units come with assessments, assignments, and much more. Feel free to use what we’ve created for a unit or take our model and customize it to fit your scholars. Below is a diagram of the one unit (curriculum lesson card) from history. At your fingertips are resources, arranged by these categories, from which you can pull into your scholar’s customizable plan. Use our suggested lesson sequence or customize to your scholars unique interests.
